Old Man Pine Tree Poem by Karl Carpenter

There is a pine I see every dawn,
standing eye to eye with my childhood home,
grown so long that half the trunk is bare
of branches and the creases of bark can show.
He saw Mohicans before the British came,
he was here when Abe gave his address
at Gettysburg and when the slaves were freed,
the first shot and last death at Wounded Knee,
and when the Japanese fell on Pearl Harbor.

He waited while my parents first met at
a Laundromat- and I was an embryo.
Also when I ran about as a toddler
in the yard dressed only in Adam's garb,
and still here as I graduate from college.
He'll likely linger longer than my life,
and live to see a flying car; perhaps
a machine will gaze on him the same as me.
Yes, he will easily pass me by.

Yes, to mortals like me he'll live forever-
he will be here for all the years I have,
and many more to come after I die.
Nonetheless, in months or centuries
he'll join the other fallen trees, and me.
He, too, will fall by the god of death- Time-
it will take him with its wearing decay
in months or centuries, none can say.
But still- I'm here to be with him today.